Canadian buyer pays $25M for area offices in 1st deal in U.S.

A Canadian investment firm looking to make its first foray into the U.S. has purchased a 780,000-square-foot portfolio of office buildings in Central Ohio.

Boston-based AEW Capital Management LP sold the properties to Montreal-based Amcor Holdings Inc. for $25.1 million. The buildings stretch along the Interstate 270 corridor from Dublin’s Metro Center business park to the Corporate Exchange office park in northeast Columbus.

At $32 a square foot, the sale price falls well short of the combined $59 million, or $63 a square foot, that AEW Capital paid for the properties in 1995 and 1998.

Amcor Vice President Jairo Sukster said the investment marked the firm’s first office investment in the States.

“We were always looking for an opportunity of significant size,” Sukster said. “This was the opportunity.”

Really bad timing

Amcor was touring the One Columbus office tower downtown in September 2008 on the day Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed into bankruptcy, pushing the global financial markets into a tailspin. The collapse tightened credit, which put the brakes to the commercial real estate industry.

“Our timing was bad. I realized that deal wouldn’t happen,” Sukster said. “But ever since then, we looked for another good candidate.”

Indeed, the One Columbus skyscraper didn’t sell until last fall.

The AEW Capital buildings went on the market in October 2011 through CBRE Group Inc. investment sales agents George Stecz and Don Roberts, who also had marketed One Columbus. The portfolio attracted 12 suitors.

Amcor financed $18 million of the transaction through NXT Capital LLC of Chicago, according to public records.

Value-added properties

AEW Capital had paid $15.7 million in 1998 for four Officescape buildings along West Wilson Bridge Road in Worthington. The company bought the nearby Corporate Hill properties at 250 and 300 Old Wilson Bridge Road, three Corporate Exchange buildings off Cleveland Avenue, and 400 Metro Place North in Dublin for a combined $43.4 million in 1995.